Generals of the Army

by James H. Willbanks

  Eisenhower had directed Bradley and Montgomery to press their attacks forward with due haste. Montgomery’s key mission in the late summer and early fall had been to seize and open the port of Antwerp and press ahead to the Ruhr Valley, Germany’s industrial heartland.55 Antwerp was Europe’s largest port and promised to solve Allied supply problems if it and its approaches could be taken. Montgomery’s focus, however, became that of gaining the Ruhr and if possible striking out across the north German plain to Berlin. He had hoped that Eisenhower would assign First Army to guard his flank while Patton’s Third was effectively halted along the Meuse River. Antwerp became an afterthought until Eisenhower made it clear that the port had to be opened. Antwerp fell to Montgomery in September, but he failed to clear the approaches until November 28, 1944, effectively crippling Bradley’s ability to move forward.56

  Bradley adamantly opposed Montgomery’s narrow front, arguing that it permitted the Germans to concentrate their limited resources against one army group. Conceding that the terrain favored Montgomery’s army group over his own, Bradley saw the need for a secondary attack that, if Montgomery’s efforts failed, would offer an alternative approach to the German heartland. This two-front approach (the addition of Alexander Patch’s Sixth Army Group driving up the Rhône River offering a third front) compounded the German Army’s inability to defend the German heartland.

  German defenses had stiffened, and the heady days of August were a thing of the past. Montgomery managed to convince Eisenhower that if given command of the three airborne divisions that Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) held in reserve, a series of parachute landings in conjunction with a determined armored attack up the Highway 69 corridor the paratroopers controlled would propel the British across the Rhine and into the Ruhr. Beyond the Ruhr lay the north German plains and the seduction of an open road to Berlin. Montgomery hoped to have control over First Army to guard his flank. The operation was code-named Market Garden, and Montgomery got his airborne drop with First Army assigned to support him. The remainder of Bradley’s Army group marked time. When the Germans stopped Montgomery’s assault short of the Rhine, Eisenhower returned to a broad-front approach. Eisenhower freed Bradley to resume his offensives, making Twelfth Army Group, with First Army back under his control, the Allied main effort in November. First Army would move toward Aachen and the Ruhr while Third Army would move into Lorraine, cross the Moselle in the vicinity of Metz, and seek crossing points over the Rhine that would lead to Frankfurt. Encircling the Ruhr from the south became a possibility for future operations. The problem with the approach was that as Allied armies pressed forward, the amount of frontage grew. Bradley found himself stretched thin; there was little in the way of an Army group reserve available either to leverage a breakthrough or to block an attack.

  Eisenhower saw fit to strengthen Bradley’s hand by assigning William Hood Simpson’s Ninth Army to Twelfth Army Group. Bradley initially placed Ninth Army between First and Third armies, but then in November, fearing that Montgomery might again gain control over one of his armies in his push northward, he shifted Ninth to form his flank with Montgomery’s Twenty-first Army Group. Bradley had no intention of letting First Army fall under Montgomery’s control, but he was willing to sacrifice the less experienced Ninth if need be.

  The war on the Western Front from September through November was largely an infantryman’s fight.57 What had been a war of maneuver became one of attrition. The taxing battles of November pressured U.S. Army resources. Freezing rains, flooded streams, and the accompanying cases of trench foot, as well as determined German defenders, drained the optimism of summer.58 Patton’s thrust through Lorraine slowed to a crawl in front of Metz. Hodges had requested permission from Bradley to take control of the Hürtgen Forest to secure his flanks before a larger offensive into the Ruhr. Bradley agreed. The Hürtgen proved a bloodbath for the units Hodges committed. Two badly battered but well-dug-in German infantry divisions chewed up four U.S. Infantry divisions during November.59 Costing over 33,000 casualties, control of the forest may have been worth the toll had it materially contributed to access to the Ruhr. It did not, and the limited mobility of the German units in the woods made suspect the assumption that they could do much to threaten Hodges’s flanks.60 By the time November was over, Bradley conceded that his hopes to “smash through to the Rhine” had failed.61

  With the coming of December, Bradley’s armies were stretched thin, particularly in the Ardennes. Eisenhower had directed Bradley to attack toward the Ruhr, First Army swinging to the north of the Ardennes and Third to its south. In the Ardennes itself, Bradley elected to accept the risk of assigning the area to First Army’s VIII Corps under Troy Middleton. The VIII consisted of four divisions, including the badly damaged 28th Infantry Division and the 106th Infantry Division, a division new to combat.

  Bradley was repeating what he had done in North Africa, namely holding an extensive front with minimum forces. Middleton’s four divisions were covering a front of seventy-five miles in heavily wooded, compartmentalized terrain, roughly eighteen miles per division. Neither the corps nor the Army group had any real reserves, nor was it expected that any would be needed. Allied intelligence had come to rely on Ultra intercepts (intelligence gained by breaking encrypted German communications), none of which indicated a major offensive was in the offing.62 The Ardennes seemed a quiet, safe sector, but it would soon prove to be exactly the place Hitler elected to wager one last throw of the dice.

  The Germans had used the Ardennes in the Franco-Prussian War, as well as in their 1940 attack on France, to good effect. Bradley was well aware of the area’s history; however, in the two earlier campaigns, the Germans had managed to overcome the limited road network through superior mobility in relation to their foes. Hitler’s plan for Army Group B (now under the command of Field Marshal Walter Model), consisting of three armies (Sixth SS Panzer, Fifth Panzer, and Seventh Army) that he would send into the Ardennes, was that they penetrate First Army positions, cross the Meuse near Namur, and then wheel right and drive north toward Antwerp. Sixth SS Panzer Army in the original plan would provide the main attack while also expanding and holding the northern flank of the penetration. Seventh Army, with only four infantry divisions, would secure the southern flank. Fifth Panzer would secure Sixth Panzer’s left flank and press toward Brussels.63 Fifteenth Army would provide a supporting attack to the northeast toward Maastricht from Aachen. When Antwerp fell, Allied armies would be split and the way open for a negotiated settlement—or so Hitler hoped.

  It was a gamble German field commanders, most notably Rundstedt and Model, believed beyond their capabilities, for though men and machines were available, fuel was not.64 Allied fuel depots would have to be captured intact, a highly questionable proposition. The plan also rested on inclement weather minimizing Allied air superiority. It assumed the complete collapse of American frontline divisions. Underlying it all was a strict schedule. Hitler assumed his panzers would reach the Meuse in two days. Rundstedt thought it would take four. Plans are only as good as the validity of the facts and assumptions that underlie them, and in this case the assumptions proved false.

  When the German attack came on December 16, it came with eight panzer divisions, twenty-eight infantry divisions, and two mechanized brigades, a total of 200,000 men. Over 500 tanks supported the assault.65 Facing Fifth Panzer Army, the U.S. 106th and 28th divisions could not hold, the former essentially disintegrating on the second day and the latter being encircled and forced back, one of its regiments shattered.66 The American front collapsed as planned; resistance did not. American soldiers caught in the maelstrom fought back against the German advance. The tight schedule for German units to reach the key crossroad towns of Bastogne and St. Vith unraveled, first by minutes, then by hours, finally by days.

  The Allies had been caught off guard by the German attack and were arguably slow to react.67 Bradley mistakenly believed it a spoiling attack and dispatched, with Eisen
hower’s approval, two armored divisions (7th Armored from Ninth Army and 10th Armored from Third Army) to the support of Middleton’s VIII Corps.68 As the enemy picture worsened, Bradley maintained his composure. When subordinates pointed out that Twelfth Army Group headquarters in Luxembourg City, then located near the path of the German onslaught, was threatened, Bradley responded: “I will never move backwards with a headquarters. There is too much prestige at stake.”69

  Eisenhower’s view of the situation was that he had to prevent the German Army from crossing the Meuse. To do this, he assigned Montgomery the task of securing the Meuse River crossings behind the American VIII Corps. By December 19 Montgomery held the river’s west bank and its bridges with the tanks of his XXX Corps. The emerging enemy order of battle suggested that this might well be the last large-scale operational reserve remaining on the Western Front, and with that realization Bradley saw an opportunity to create a second Falaise pocket—one he intended to close.

  Bradley directed that St. Vith and Bastogne, two key crossroads towns, be reinforced and held as long as possible. He requested that Eisenhower give him the SHAEF reserve consisting of XVIII Airborne Corps (101st and 82nd Airborne divisions) to assist in contesting the two towns. Middleton assigned St. Vith to 7th Armored Division, and there they stayed for several critical days before overwhelming enemy pressure forced the town’s evacuation.70 Combat Command Reserve (CCR) of the 10th Armored Division and 101st Airborne Division reached Bastogne just in time to prevent its fall, winning the race in no small measure owing to remnants of American units that contested the German advance. Though the 101st and CCR were soon surrounded, they held the key crossroads town, effectively slowing the German advance to the Meuse bridges. On the edges of the penetration, Bradley ordered that the shoulders be held, limiting the roads available to pass German units forward and constricting their logistics flow. Hodges assigned four U.S. divisions (1st, 2nd, 9th, and 99th Infantry divisions) the task.71 They too held. In the south, at Bradley’s direction, Patton effectively changed Third Army’s direction of advance by ninety degrees, slamming his divisions into the flank of the German Seventh Army.72 Bradley further directed that 4th Armored Division relieve Bastogne.73 The German timetable had fallen seriously behind in the face of unexpected American resistance. To make matters worse for the Germans, the skies cleared, bringing American bombers.

  Had Bradley retained command of an intact Twelfth Army Group, the German penetration might well have been cut off and destroyed as he had envisioned. It was not. The blame fell, perhaps unjustly, on Montgomery, who, during the darkest hours of the German attack, had lobbied Eisenhower for and received command of Ninth Army and those elements of First Army north of the penetration, effectively leaving Bradley command of only Third Army and XVIII Airborne Corps. Accepting the argument that the German penetration threatened Twelfth Army Group’s two armies north of the penetration, Eisenhower, with Bradley’s grudging acceptance, agreed to the transfer, but he noted that it was only a temporary change.

  Had Montgomery seen the operational picture in the same light, the result should have been the same; he did not. Following Eisenhower’s orders, he (as mentioned previously) secured the Meuse River bridges but failed to do anything of substance in attacking the penetration from the north until early January, arguing that the Americans had taken such a beating that he would need time to “tidy up” the situation before a sustained offensive could be attempted; the opportunity slipped away. Over the first several weeks of January 1945, the Allies closed the salient. The Germans conducted an orderly delay as they evacuated those units and equipment that could possibly get out of the Ardennes. Backward they fell toward the Rhine and the hoped-for safety of the Siegfried Line. Out of fuel or destroyed, little of the armor that had spearheaded the offensive came back through the Ardennes.

  At this time Eisenhower received notice that he had been promoted to a fifth star. Understanding that splitting Twelfth Army Group and putting Ninth and most of First Army under Montgomery’s control might be seen as an expression of a lack of confidence in Bradley, Ike asked that Bradley receive a fourth star. Marshall agreed, as did President Roosevelt. The promotion may have lessened some of the sting, but the effect did not last long.

  The German Army had lost heavily in the Ardennes, but the Allies had suffered as well. Estimates vary from a low of 67,000 to a high of 100,000 German soldiers killed, captured, or wounded, compared to 80,000 Allied soldiers lost, most of them American.74 In addition to the killed and wounded, however, Montgomery managed to make a casualty of the Allied coalition, for in a press conference after the Battle of the Bulge, he suggested that First Army had been badly served by its leadership and that he had saved the cause. In truth, Montgomery and Twenty-first Army contributed to the outcome. Montgomery did assemble a coherent defense along the northern half of the German penetration. He had rushed XXX Corps to the Meuse River bridges, and a few British units had seen combat, such as the 6th Airborne Division and the 52nd Lowland Division.75 Nonetheless, the fight had been largely an American fight, involving the whole or partial engagement of thirty-two U.S. divisions. It had been the Americans who had upset the timetable and the Americans who had ensured that much-needed fuel did not fall into the hands of the Germans. Only a handful of German soldiers ever got within sight of the Meuse, thanks to the efforts of Bradley’s soldiers.76 American units had been surprised in the Ardennes, to be sure, but as Bradley had believed, mobility compensated for numbers. There would be no repeat of the German attack of 1940 against second-echelon French divisions. Had Montgomery been willing to gamble his reputation on the ability of his First and Ninth Army units to close the pocket from the north, as Patton had done in the south, the way ahead might well have been open. It was a wager he only belatedly made.

  The reduction of the Ardennes salient was complete by January 28, 1945. Bradley’s Army group, again containing First and Third armies, pushed on toward the Rhine as part of Eisenhower’s plan to close the three Allied army groups on the river before crossing and driving into the heart of Germany. One major German pocket existed in Lieutenant General Jacob Devers’s area. Eisenhower ordered it reduced. Bradley’s orders were to continue to push forward until stopped and then go on the defensive. The one exception to this directive was that Ike freed Bradley to take advantage of any opportunity that offered a way to seize control of the Roer River dams. In February Eisenhower brought Twelfth Army Group to a stop. The task at hand became that of crossing the Rhine.

  Eisenhower’s plan for the Rhine campaign called for Twenty-first Army Group to provide the main thrust with a drive to the north of the Ruhr while Twelfth Army Group delivered a secondary attack aimed at Frankfurt. Neither Bradley nor his subordinates, Hodges and Patton, intended to see their mission as a supporting attack for Montgomery. Eisenhower had given them enough leeway to presume that, if they were successful, Eisenhower would make Twelfth Army Group the main effort. The plan called for First Army to drive toward the junction of the Ahr and Rhine rivers, then swing south to meet Patton’s Third Army. Once in motion, the two armies picked up momentum as German resistance began to collapse. First Army units began to reach the Rhine, only to find that German engineers had blown up the bridges, in some cases as the Americans looked on. All the usable bridges fell, except one— the bridge at Remagen. First Army had its bridge across the Rhine. Rather than wait for orders, Bradley ordered Hodges to get as many men as possible across the bridge. Eisenhower seconded the decision, telling Bradley to get five divisions across and expand the bridgehead. It was an unnecessary order, as Bradley was already reinforcing the bridgehead.

  Patton, in the meantime, was to attack German defenses along the Moselle east from Trier toward the Rhine. Bradley feared Eisenhower would tell him to give some of his divisions to Devers; rather than allow this to happen, he meant to get Patton engaged so that such a diversion of his forces would be impractical. Patton ensured that Bradley got his wish. When Patton pushed the German fo
rces, they soon gave ground, their defense becoming more disjointed the deeper the Americans advanced. In the ten days between March 11 and 21, Third Army moved from the Moselle to the Rhine. Allied armies soon controlled the Rhine’s west bank from Switzerland to the North Sea. By the end of March all three Allied army groups had bridgeheads across the Rhine. Ninth Army would soon rejoin Twelfth Army Group for the final push. Hitler’s Germany was in its death throes.

  The last offensive for Bradley’s armies would be ensuring that the remnants of the Nazi leadership did not find haven in the German Alps. In hindsight, it now seems this mission was unnecessary. Surrounded by the Red Army in his bunker, Hitler committed suicide. With the German military now shattered and the morale of the German people broken, there would be no last Nazi stand in the Alps. The war in Europe drew to a close on May 7, 1945. For Bradley this spelled the end of his combat experience, for although he quickly asked for reassignment to the Pacific, General Douglas MacArthur made it clear that he had no need for another Army group commander. Marshall elected not to push the issue in Bradley’s behalf, having another mission in mind for his friend.

  Marshall understood that the scope of the war would create a tremendous demand for services to take care of returning veterans. The Veterans Administration (VA) held this charge. It was here that Marshall believed Bradley’s skills would best serve the country, for the agency had become ossified over the years.

  The VA faced a daunting task. Estimates were that 10 percent of World War II veterans would seek services from the administration. By the end of 1946 it was clear that number would top 25 percent.77 Expanding and improving medical services became Bradley’s first challenge. Opening educational benefits for 15 million returning veterans proved his second. He convinced Congress to drop the age ceiling, then twenty-five, for receiving educational benefits, and college enrollments increased from 1.3 million at war’s end to 2.3 million by 1947.78 During his tenure as director of the VA, Bradley extended services to more than 17 million veterans in programs ranging from health care to job training. The effort did not escape the attention of President Truman when General Eisenhower, then chief of staff of the Army, elected to retire.